Suspected Russian killer on trial over Berlin killing

A suspected Moscow-backed killer goes on trial Wednesday for the murder of a man of Chechen origin in broad daylight in central Berlin a year ago, in a case with several precedents.

In July 2020 Mamikhan Umarov, a 43-year-old asylum seeker and a vocal critic of the Chechen Republic's government is found dead with gunshot wounds near Vienna.

Austrian police arrest two suspects from Chechnya.

Umarov, using the name Martin Beck, ran a video blog channel titled Anzor Tscharto Beck Martin, critical of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. He had also given evidence in a 2017 murder case in Ukraine.

Russia's Novaya Gazeta independent newspaper wrote that he gave "detailed evidence" on contract killings of Kadyrov's opponents to the Ukrainian SBU security service and counter-intelligence agencies.

More than 10 years earlier in Austria, in January 2009, 27-year-old Chechen dissident Umar Israilov, was shot dead on a Vienna street after a botched attempt to spirit him back to Chechnya.

He had accused Kadyrov of torture before the European Court of Human Rights.

In 2011 three ethnic Chechen men were convicted in Vienna for the murder but the killer himself, who had taken refuge in Chechnya, has never been put on trial.

In January 2020, Imran Aliev, 44, a blogger at times critical of the Chechen leadership under Kadyrov is found stabbed to death in a hotel room close to the train station in France's northern city of Lille.

The French judiciary said the main suspect had stayed at Aliev's home in Belgium, where he had received political asylum, and had then fled after the murder to the Russian Caucasus.

In September 2011 Musaevi Berkkhazh, 33, a senior Chechen militant, and his bodyguards Rustam Altermirol and Zavrbek Amriev were shot dead on the street as they left an Istanbul mosque following Friday prayers.

The shooting was the fourth killing of militants and opponents of Chechnya's pro-Kremlin authorities in four years. Gazhi Edilsultanov was killed in September 2008, Islam Canibekov in December the same year, and Ali Osaev in 2009.

Berkkhazh was reportedly a lieutenant of Doku Umarov, the separatist Chechen leader who is said to be behind a number of deadly attacks against Russia, including the Moscow airport bombing in January and the metro attack in March 2010.